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Visit Italy for less than $20. No passport required. Seem impossible? Not if you purchase "Italia," the new CD from trumpeter Chris Botti.

Just nominated for the Best Pop Instrumental Album Grammy, the set of 12 lush, velvety tracks lovingly transport the listener to Italy through Botti's duets with Paula Cole, the late Dean Martin (on "I've Grown Accustomed to Your Face," which is also featured on Martin's "Forever Cool" collection) and Italian native son Andrea Bocelli. Plus he takes on movie themes from Ennio Morricone and "Nessun Dorma" from Puccini's "Turandot."

"Everyone in the world, whether they've been there or not, relates to the romantic connotation of Italy, whether through love, art, romance, music, visuals," says Botti, who lived in Italy for two years in grade school.

The idea for the album came to him mid-flight. "I was saying to my friend, I think it would be so cool to do an album that had a lot of Italian music. If Miles Davis did ‘Sketches of Spain,' hello? It shows Miles Davis in his most melancholy, sensual playing. I took a cue from that.

"The concept came about a year before we even dropped a note," says Botti, 45. "We really knew we had something. It's something that hasn't been done by a lot of jazz musicians and plays into my strengths as a trumpet player."

Botti has transcended far beyond his contemporary jazz audience especially through his last two CDs, "When I Fall in Love" and "To Love Again: The Duets," both of which hit No. 1 on the Top Jazz albums chart, as well as through his playing with such artists as Sting, Paul Simon, Diana Krall and Joni Mitchell. His broad fan base led "Italia" to debut at No. 27 on the Billboard 200, a tremendously high start for a jazz artist.

Perhaps unfairly, because he operates primarily in the world of smooth jazz, Botti does not always get his due from serious jazz heads who worship at the altar of more traditional players, such as Wynton Marsalis. "America sees jazz trumpet playing as Wynton," he flatly states. "For me to do a bebop album ... how could I ever do that as well as Wynton Marsalis, and how would that serve me or my fan base? Wynton could kick my ass."

Botti can blow with the best of them, but he has little patience for the young lions who think the story ends there. "A lot of the young jazz trumpet players, if they're playing at 2 a.m. and they're burning and playing fast and everyone's going crazy," he says, they go into the studio trying to recreate what they had in the club "and wonder why it only sells two copies."

"The older I get and the more opportunity I have to make records, I could impart a little wisdom on young kids that are making albums," he says. "I put them on and they just don't sound flattering to me at all. When you go back to those Sinatra records, you see the mics he used and the way he could rehearse and he was such a stickler. Put a little thought into it."

Speaking of Sinatra, Botti laughs when he recalls his encounter with Francis Xavier Sinatra more than 20 years as a young college drop-out. Botti played a trumpet solo with Sinatra on "Fly Me to the Moon" during a rehearsal for a show at Universal Amphitheater show. "He said, ‘Nice solo, kid.' Being young and being very stupid, I felt like we were buddies," he says. "I went up to him on the coffee break to buddy up to him. It must have been like nails on a chalkboard for him. I asked ‘Should I play my trumpet this way?' I basically made a fool out of myself. With a wink and a nod, his assistant came up to me and said, ‘Don't bother Mr. Sinatra again."